A look at Yours Truly’s ambitious new 19-course tasting menu

(Images: Renée Suen)

Yours Truly, which opened last year on Ossington, made a name for its affordable yet ambitious set dinner menus, casual bar bites and crafted cocktails (all of which propelled it to the top of our list of 2012’s best new restaurants). But now they’re shaking things up. Following an expansion of the kitchen, Yours Truly is abandoning its popular bar menu and going tasting menu–only, with two options available. Chef Jeff Claudio tells us that the Yours Truly menu ($45) is structured much like the one at New York’s revered Eleven Madison Park, where diners choose one principal ingredient for each of the tasting menu’s four courses. But for adventursome diners (and those with a heartier appetite), the real draw is the new Carte Blanche menu ($85-$100, depending on ingredients used), a 19-plus-course saga of a meal that’s peppered with amuses, snacks and more substantial composed dishes. There are only a dozen carte blanche menus available each evening, so reserve ahead. Oh, and one thing that hasn’t changed: the plates are still served by the cooks, who are always eager to get into the minutiae of the preparation of each dish.

Course 15: inari salt cod. If the Yours Truly snack menu had a signature item, this was it. A blend of Japanese and Portuguese influences comes together as a chubby, fried tofu pouch filled with shredded salt cod and sushi rice stained with Furikake seasoning. The snack is finished with Kewpie mayonnaise and nori

Course 14: egg. A take on tortilla de patatas where the diner is supposed to dig through the layers of potato foam, potato chips and a poached egg perfumed with truffled herb oil. The course is inspired by the lauded Spanish restaurant Arzak